College and Jesus: Can You Stand Strong?
By Stacey Stone
“My two children, when they went to college, I shared with them this piece of wisdom; that no matter what happens, a bad truth is better than a good lie. And there is nothing that could happen that I would not support them through as long as they tell the truth.” – Cindy, Family Life Radio listener
One of the greatest fears that the parent of a teenager who is a Christ-follower faces is what their child will face when they go off to college. For mothers and fathers of teens, Dr. Michael Guillen shares your fear and has written a book, Amazing Truths: How Science and The Bible Agree, to confront the professors and university officials who believe that the Bible and science cannot be studied or discussed together. “Whenever I talk, nine times out of ten, one of the big groups that stay afterward to talk to me are mothers and typically many of them are in tears when they are telling me this: ‘You know, my kid, we raised them in the church and we have a good Christian home. Then they took off to school and they came back as atheists,” Dr. Guillen explains. He continues, “When you dig deep and find out why, what’s happening is these kids are going off away from home and they’re being told that you have to choose between science and the Bible. And that to choose the Bible is to be lowbrow and uneducated and outright stupid.” So what is a parent to do to prepare their child for the secular science beliefs they are going to face?
Dr. Guillen says that you do not have to choose between the Bible and science, “It’s hard out there because we are being told that we are like the children of divorce. There is a divorce between the Bible and science and we need to choose and that is simply not true.” He hopes to empower believers so that when they are faced with a challenge to their faith they can stand up and resist. Dr. Guillen shares, “Part of what I am praying that this book will do is that it will empower believers. That is to say that if you already believe, if you are already on the path with Jesus then this book is going to give you confidence that you are on the right track.” And in that moment when someone challenges your child’s faith, that they will have the tools to push back and not simply accept what their professors are saying. He wants to reassure the teens and their parents, “My hope above all is that young people who leave home and they go off to college and get educated and they encounter this hostility, it really is just all out right hostility not just disagreement, that they will feel confident that they are on the right path and they will continue walking with the Lord.”